Don't look back: the wind of creativity blows from the unconscious and the introspective trek back down the abyss, seeking information about the origins of art and mind, is in the wrong direction. Bob Dylan condemns introspection in the Old Testament treats's Lot's wife looking back on her burning city. Life is lived in the intuitive, crazy moment that leaves analysis plodding behind. Dylan values art that breaks bonds, that bursting forth of the personality into freedom.
The ideal woman in Gates of Eden:
At dawn my lover comes to me
and tells me of her dream
with no attempt to shovel the glimpse
into the ditch of what each one means.
The modern challenges are political, communal, and familiar. In the face of these, Dylan as a character
appears in his poetry as a man who acts within chaos, rebounding from absurd situations. Maggie's Farm
is a montage of satirical familiar and political personalities. Dylan tries to work within their rules:
Your grandpa's cane it turns into sword.
Your grandma prays to pictures pasted on a board.
Fistfights in the kitchen, they're enough to make me cry
...And you ask why I don't live here?
Honey, how come you don't move?
But beyond a comic ineptitude when dealing with the chaotic world, Dylan is seldom critical of himself.
In his generous advice to women, he portrays himself as a sensible and compelling alternative to the mean
and dishonest personalities that plague the world. In Queen Jane, he assumes a superiority that turns
bitter when unrecognized:
When all the clowns that you have commissioned
have died in battle or in vain
and you are sick of all this repetition,
won't you come see me Queen Jane?
I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine is without rancor, containing a character undaunted by futility, suggesting
a solution or at least a position to assume in the face of the social chaos. The character of the Christian
saint is described in plain and elegant formal verse:
I dreamed I saw St. Augustine
as bright as you or me
tearing through these quarters
in the utmost misery.
With a blanket underneath his arm
and a coat of solid gold,
searching for the very souls
whom already have been sold.
Arise, arise he cried so loud
in a voice without restraint.
Come out ye gifted kings and queens,
and hear my sad complaint.
His characters are not drawn from careful research in his daily life or from history or literature but are
stereotyped villains and heroes, little more than names and reputations drawn from his own imagination.
The outlaw John Wesley Harding appears as a mid-Western Robin Hood, Einstein shows up disguised as
Robin Hood, and John the Baptist tortures a thief.
In the satires that comprise the bulk of his work, the antagonists are powerful in small ways, taking themselves too seriously, becoming stuck on a low level, unable to change, and often failing even in their lowest endeavors. There is no Satan in charge of the Hellish earth but the earth swarms with demons that the intelligent person, that is the person taking Dylan's advice, can avoid. The victims, in their ignorance, submit themselves. In Maggie's Farm:
Ma talks to all the servants
about man and god and law.
Everybody says
she's the brains behind Paw.
She's 68 but says she's 54.
I ain't gonna work for Maggie's Ma no more.
The 115th Dream is a fountain of low characters:
Captain Ahab started writing out some deeds
"Let's set up a fort and start buying the place with beads!"
Just then a cop came down the street crazy as a loon
and threw us all in jail for carrying a harpoon.
...I rapped upon a house
with a US flag upon display
I said "Could you please help me out,
I've got some friends down the way"
The man says, "Get out of here,
I'll tear you limb from limb!"
I said "You know they refused Jesus too."
He said, "You're not him.
Get out of here before I break your bones
I ain't your Pop!"
I decided to have him arrested
and went looking for a cop.
The prophesy of social catastrophe looms large and dark in his songs. His early Times They are a
Changing warns about the impending social revolution and is written in a protest-song format that today
seems unbearable. Better survivors from the 60's are his landscapes illustrating the impending disaster.
The howling desolation of All Along the Watchtower is cold and disturbing:
There must be some way out of here,
said the joker to the thief.
There's too much confusion.
I can't get no relief.
...Let us not talk falsely now,
the hour is getting late.
...Two riders were approaching;
the wind began to howl.
The apocalypse of which he warns is the wave of unacceptable changes that will be with us next year or
next week. If there were not so much destruction, we could be amused. In The Drifter's Escape:
O help me in my weakness,
I heard the drifter say,
as they carried him from the courtroom,
and were taking him away.
I still do not know
what it is that I have done wrong.
The judge he cast his robe aside,
a tear came to his eye.
"You fail to understand" he said,
"Why must you even try."
...Just then a bolt of lightning
struck the courthouse out of shape.
While everybody knelt to pray,
the drifter did escape.
Dylan's view is critical rather than synthetic. He does not offer solutions but satirizes the problems. He
destroys positive expectations and replaces them with nightmares. Despair generates creativity in Tom
Thumb Blues:
When you're lost in the rain in Juarez
and its Easter time too,
then your gravity fails and
negativity won't pull you through
,
don't put on any airs when you're
down on Rue Morgue avenue.
They got some hungry women there
and they sure make a mess out of you.
Desolation Row is a tour through a bleak landscape maintained by demonic employees:
Einstein disguised as Robin Hood
with his memories in a trunk
passed this way an hour ago
with his friend a jealous monk.
He looked so immaculately frightful
as he bummed a cigarette
and he went off sniffing drainpipes
and reciting the alphabet.
You would not think to look at him,
he was famous long ago
for playing the electric violin
on Desolation Row.
Those who repress others are themselves in chains, tied to their prisoners, unable to change. The chained
victims approve of or at least accept their treatment, believing what they have been told. In Highway 61
Revisited,
God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe said, "God, you must be puttin me on!"
God said, "Man, you can do what you want
but the next time you see me you better run!"
Abe said, "Where do you want this killing done?"
God said, "Out on Highway 61."
In Maggie's Farm:
I try my best
to be just like I am
but everybody wants me
to be just like them
They say "Sing while you slave!"
but I just get bored.
Women are idealized. He speaks of a powerful and perfect woman in She Belongs to Me:
She's got every thing she needs;
She's an artist, she don't look back.
She can take the dark out of the night time
and paint the daytime black.
You will start out standing,
proud to steal her anything she sees.
You'll wind up peeking through a key hole
down upon your knees.
The woman in Like a Rolling Stone is self-condemned and could be free to join him:
you used to ride on your chrome horse with your diplomat
Queen Jane has it a little better but is bonded to her prisoners. Her sins are light enough to be forgiven
and she receives an invitation in Queen Jane Approximately:
When all the clowns that you have commissioned
have died in battle or in vain
and you are sick of all this repetition,
won't you come see me Queen Jane?
Tom Paine, a brilliant and mysterious poem, stars this woman:
As I went out one morning
to breath the air around Tom Paine
I met the fairest damsel
that ever did walk in chains.
I offered her my hand;
she took me by the arm.
I knew that very instant
she meant to do me harm.
Dylan's images emerge from dreams or other fantastic sources and are reinforced by super-realistic props
and activities. The objects and people represent a force, often malicious, that is about to break through the
veil of our misinterpretations. The images are jagged fragments of dreams, embellished and personified
into powerful, frightening onslaughts. In some of the songs, the images have a fantastic unity, whirling
out of the same unexplainable source. In The Gates of Eden:
the lamppost stands with folded arms
its iron claws attached...
In Subterranean Homesick Blues:
Johnny's in the basement mixing up the medicine.
I'm on the pavement thinking about the government.
Dylan's poetic style embraces common speech that samples the chaotic world. His phrases, sentences, and
stories are not edited deeply. They are often powerful and often lapse into nonsense.
His Old Testament references and extensive use of passive voice gives much of his verse a Biblical component that he overlays with street talk into a powerful set of images that reflects our time. His characters are at times wrathful and vengeful gods while other characters are understanding and forgiving.
He writes mostly in a ballad form, narrating satirical stories, and seldom is concerned with aesthetics, although Mister Tambourine Man, especially in the second half, has some excellent lines, aimed only at the beauty and freedom of the verse. He has two good laments in the early Bob Dylan's Dream, a remembrances of his youth, and in I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine.
He has his way of trimming or toning an expression that he thinks is getting too serious. Nobility or beauty, except in his ideal woman, is seldom championed. He leaves many of his stories unresolved.
He displays a mastery of packed imagery. In the 115th Dream, eight characters satirically cartwheel through the song. In these chaotic adventures, the sequence of the images illustrate modern life as a tantalizing juxtaposition of desire, perception, and opposition by parental figures. His imagery implies theme, rather than explaining it. The listener strains to understand, leaning into the poetry, and so becomes vulnerable to the impact of the imagery. I began listening to his songs at 18 and am composed, in a part, of his verse.